Poet Patricia Smith Wins the National Book Award

Summary

All Of It — Poet Patricia Smith Wins the National Book Award

Podcast: All Of It (WNYC)
Host: David Fuerst (in for Alison Stewart)
Guest: Patricia Smith
Air Date: December 15, 2025

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Overview of the Episode

This episode features poet Patricia Smith, newly awarded the National Book Award for Poetry for her collection The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems. The conversation explores Smith’s journey as a writer from performance poetry in jazz clubs through academic recognition, her roots and influences, the evolving nature of her work over decades, and the power of witnessing and sharing lived experiences through poetry. The episode includes readings of both early and recent poems, and an intimate discussion of Smith’s family, teaching, and the responsibility poets hold today.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Winning the National Book Award & Bridging Poetic Worlds

• Performance and Academic Divide:
  Smith describes her entry to poetry through live performance, long being labeled a “performance poet,” and the longstanding division between “academic poets” and “street or performance poets.”
  • “For a long time I was considered a performer...there was always this imaginary chasm between the so called academic poets and the street or performance poets...until I realized that we were all doing the same thing.” (02:13)
  • She reflects on the emotional arc of moving from smoky Chicago jazz clubs to sharing the stage with "premier poets" she once only admired.

2. Looking Back: Evolution of Her Work (1991–2024)

• Beginnings and Early Community:
  Smith recounts a formative experience at a five-hour poetry program in Chicago, surprise at discovering the city's literary community, and being encouraged by luminaries like Gwendolyn Brooks.
  • “I went to this thing and...I found out that there was this amazing community. Gwendolyn Brooks...was there, and she was encouraging the younger poets.” (04:00)
  • The Green Mill jazz club became her creative home, shaping her ideas about poetry and audience.
    • “I've never thought, well, I'm the poet, you are the audience...I'm kind of trying to grow the community of witnesses.” (05:04)
• From Spontaneity to Structure:
  Smith tracks her evolution from free-form, stream-of-consciousness writing to mastering technique and poetic form.
  • “In the beginning I was just trying to get it on page so I could get up on stage...I knew nothing about line breaks...When I decided that I wanted to learn the mechanics of poetry, I went to an MFA program.” (05:24)
  • “You learn everything, so you can learn to break rules. That's what it's all about.” (06:23)

3. Revisiting Joys and Wounds: The Curatorial Process

• Emotional Excavation:
  Reflecting on assembling a collection spanning 30+ years, Smith describes the emotional labor of revisiting both painful and joyous moments:
  • “Going back in was like...opening a wound, but in some instances, it's revisiting something that was happier. But I did have to go back in...I remembered how I wanted to feel when I was done.” (06:48)

4. Poetry Reading: “Doing the Louvre”

• Introduction (08:06):
  A poem from her early years depicting her first trip to Paris and the wonder of discovery, “before you got jaded and numb to it.”
• Notable Excerpts:
  • “We're of simpler stock, city and country dust, collard greens, moon pies, bullet holes and basement slow dances. We are shamelessly American rough street girls with rusty knees, the flip side of Parisian wisp...But you're a junkie just like I am. Too long denied access to official beauty. We walk these streets with our mouths open and faces tilting up.” (08:49)
  • “How can the world help but love us? We would give Venus our arms...Knowing she's a junkie just like we are. She longs for our wild voices, our naive accidental beauty.” (12:09)

5. On "Junkie" and the Collectors of Experience

• Metaphor of “Junkie”:
  The refrain, “you're a junkie, just like I am,” is explained as a hunger for experience, beauty, and art:
  • “A junkie, like a lover of things. A collector, you know, I want all of it. And I want it right now.” (13:42)
  • Smith relates this mindset to her ongoing pursuit of artistic collaboration, underscoring how the arts “are always speaking to each other.” (13:52)

6. The Power and Influence of Teachers

• Dedication and Personal Anecdote:
  The book is dedicated to her teachers; Smith recalls tracking down her fifth grade teacher, the first adult to believe in her literary potential:
  • “I went to a school where we were expected to fail...For the first time, I had a teacher look at me and look at something that I had written and tell me, you were meant to do this.” (14:38)
  • “If it had not happened, it would be so easy to talk me into, okay, your life is preordained...so just face it, you're not going to make it.” (15:58)
  • Parental influence: Her mother was skeptical—“Only white men do that”—but Smith persisted, finding in writing a sense of autonomy and hope.

7. Advice for Aspiring Poets

• Universal Storytelling:
  Smith encourages writers to see themselves as storytellers and to value their stories:
  • “Poetry is something that belongs explicitly to you. No one has to see it. It could make you move from one place in your head to a safer place to a stronger place...Don't think of yourself as a poet, think of yourself as a storyteller.” (16:49)

8. Poetry Reading: “What Daughters Come Down To” (2010–2024 Section)

• Introduction (18:18):
  Smith chooses to read this late-stage poem, hinting at its personal significance.
• Notable Excerpts:
  • “For what I'm sure is the fifth time, my mother plugs in a flat mournful hum where the words I love you too should be. Then she hangs up without saying goodbye...” (18:28)
  • “Her rugs are faultless. The purpled tulips I have sent for her birthday are insistent, feral beauty, a blood in the room like her daughter, they have bloomed in the clutches of vapor. I love you too, she thinks out loud, but can't.” (19:53)
• On Vulnerability and Community:
  • “When I tried to address [family things, heartbreak] earlier, I didn't have the tools or the courage to do so...We tend to clutch our secrets. And the minute you bring something out into the air, it's like, 'Oh, I didn't have a great relationship with my mom'—other people come up and say, 'me too.'” (20:27)
  • Smith remarks on poetry’s rising importance as a place of “truth in such short supply.” (21:31)

9. Closing Reflections

• On Family, Music, and the Arc of a Career:
  The collection is lauded for its coverage of music, history, parenthood, and its emotional range.
• Lasting Message:
  Poetry, for Smith, is both personal therapy and collective power—the ultimate act of witnessing and connecting.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On her beginnings and the poetry community:
  “I found out that there was this amazing community. Gwendolyn Brooks...was there, and she was encouraging the younger poets.” (04:00)
• On evolving as a poet:
  “In the beginning I was just trying to get it on page so I could get up on stage...When I decided that I wanted to learn the mechanics of poetry, I went to an MFA program.” (05:24)
• On artistic hunger:
  “A junkie, like a lover of things. A collector...I want all of it. And I want it right now.” (13:42)
• On the power of teachers:
  “For the first time, I had a teacher...tell me, you were meant to do this.” (14:38)
• Advice to new writers:
  “Poetry is something that belongs explicitly to you...Don't think of yourself as a poet, think of yourself as a storyteller.” (16:49)
• On family in poetry:
  “I love you too, she thinks out loud, but can't.” —from “What Daughters Come Down To” (20:24)
• On poetry as lifeline:
  “Truth is in such short supply lately that people are now turning to the poets...when we're writing about serious things, we owe it to those people to give them a lifeline.” (21:31)

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Poetry Readings Feature

• “Doing the Louvre” (08:49–12:09):
  A vibrant, humorous, and poignant depiction of first-time wonder in Europe, woven with American cultural roots and a hunger for beauty.
• “What Daughters Come Down To” (18:28–20:24):
  A later piece that navigates maternal relationships, distance, love withheld, and the quiet drama of aging and memory.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction of guest/Smith’s background – 02:06
• Reflections on poetic identity and community – 02:13–05:16
• Poetry evolution & artistic tools – 05:16–06:23
• Emotional challenge of curating the collection – 06:28–07:57
• First poem reading: “Doing the Louvre” – 08:49–12:09
• Insights on artistic hunger (“junkie” metaphor) – 12:47–13:50
• Dedication to teachers and teacher’s influence – 14:21–16:37
• Advice for aspiring poets – 16:37–17:52
• Second poem reading: “What Daughters Come Down To” – 18:28–20:24
• Responsibility and vulnerability in poetry – 20:25–22:51
• Closing gratitude and wrap-up – 23:05–23:27

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Episode Takeaway

Patricia Smith’s conversation and poetry illuminate the breadth and depth of a poetic career rooted as much in lived experience as in literary tradition. Her arc from “rough street girl” to National Book Award winner models the power of storytelling, the necessity of vulnerability, and poetry’s crucial role in building community, truth-telling, and healing. Her words encourage would-be poets and listeners alike to claim and cherish their own stories—because, as Smith insists, “poetry is something that belongs explicitly to you.”

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

This is all of it. I'm David Fuerst in for Alison Stewart, who is staycationing. Coming up on the show this week, we'll be hearing a lot of festive music. On Wednesday, Kate Cordham will be here, fresh off her recent win at the annual Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. She will perform live for us and preview her upcoming performances at Lincoln Center. On Thursday, Klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd will be in WNYC's Studio 5 to play with his band ahead of his concert at the center for New Jewish Culture. His and on Friday, we continue an Olivet tradition and welcome members of the West Village Chorale to the studio to sing some classic carols live. And later this hour, members of Old Crow Medicine show are going to join us for a listening party for their new holiday album. But let's get this hour started with some poetry. This hour, the National Book Award for Poetry was awarded to Patricia Smith, a Princeton professor and four time champion of the National Poetry Slam. She won for her book the Intentions of New and Selected Poems. The collection spans decades of Patricia's life and career, containing poems from 1991 all the way through 2004. Patricia writes about her family, about racism in America, about jazz and joy and history and current events. The Intentions of New and Selected Poems is out now and we are joined here in the studio by poet Patricia Smith for a conversation and for some poetry readings. Patricia, welcome to all of it.

[A]

Thank you. Very glad to be here.

[B]

What does it mean, by the way, to win the National Book Award? What does that mean to you?

[A]

What does it mean to me? Well, I got introduced to poetry by getting up on stage and doing it. So for a long time I was considered a performer and for some reason.

[B]

There was always you were considered a performer, not a poet.

[A]

Well, a performance poet, let's put it that way. And for some reason there was always this imaginary chasm between the so called academic poets and the street or performance poets. And for a long time I was kind of bound by that until I realized that we were all doing the same thing. So to come from doing that in a smoky jazz club in Chicago for years to being up on a stage with some of the most premier poets and people that I used to be in awe of was absolutely amazing. And that along with the book where I went into some old books, it's selected, so I had to choose some of the poems from my other books. I kind of relived all those moments and I could see the trajectory. So, yeah, it felt absolutely amazing.

[B]

I want to talk about that. That span there. This. The poems in this new collection go from 1991, I was a child to 20, 24. So, yeah, let's talk about what was going on in your life in 1991 and looking over that time. How do you think you have changed as a poet over 30 years?

[A]

I can point to something that happened at the beginning. There was a friend of mine who heard that there was a. A poetry program going on for five hours in a winter afternoon in Chicago. So of course, you're trying to get indoors in Chicago anyway, in February or.

[B]

Whatever I say, just be inside, right?

[A]

And there were 50 poets. And I said, wow, there's this fantastic literary community in a place where I grew up and I didn't know about it. So I went to this thing and to tell you the truth, I was just going to laugh at poets. I didn't know anything. I just thought, I'll go in, they'll read something about a flower growing through concrete, and I'll laugh and it'll be great, you know. But I found out that there was this amazing community. Gwendolyn Brooks, our Pulitzer Prize winner, was still was there, and she was encouraging the younger poets. And so I got involved simply because it seemed to be the place to be. A place called the Green Mill was my home for years. It's a jazz club where supposedly Al Capone shot the piano player because he didn't like the selection. That kind of jazz club. And I was there for years and years. That's where my ideas about what poetry should be, my ideas about audience. I've never thought, well, I'm the poet, you are the audience. I think I'm not doing anything that anyone else can't do. So I'm kind of trying to grow the community of witnesses. I want people to hear me and then run off and grab a pad and a piece of paper and start telling their own stories.

[B]

Do you think that your work has changed over time? Like when you look at the earliest work and you look at some of the later pieces in the collection?

[A]

Yeah, I think because in the beginning I was just trying to get it on page so I could get up on stage. So I knew nothing about line breaks or when to break for stanzas. I was just writing it all down. If you looked at something I wrote at that time, it would look like a stream of consciousness. It would not look like a traditional poem. And when I decided that I wanted to learn the mechanics of poetry, I went to an MFA program. I learned meter, I learned form. And so now I have a toolbox because I'm a firm believer that the poem will tell you how it wants to sound. And I have now options. Oh, I need a lot of repetition. This form will do that. I need, you know, so my. In that way, I think my poetry has gotten more structured. And the most exciting thing to me is to put a wild, unwieldy poem in a tight structure and feel that tension.

[B]

Oh, that's really interesting. So that you can really play with that tension.

[A]

You learn everything, so you can learn to break rules. That's what it's all about.

[B]

Nice. Nice. Now, what was the process like, by the way? Going back through all of these years, 1991 through 2024, you're not somebody that shies away from some very difficult experiences and topics, and you're revisiting all kinds of things during that period.

[A]

I think sometimes, you know, at the beginning, it was more of a recreational exercise. And then I realized a. I'm going to write to move myself sanely from day to day, and I'm going to write to let other people know that they're not alone. So going back in, there were things that I wrote and said, oh, thank goodness. I'm on the other side of that now. You know, I've written through it. I've gotten to a better place in my head about this. And then going back in was like. Well, I would say opening a wound, but in some instances, it's revisiting something that was happier. But I did have to go back in. And I remembered walking to my keyboard with the feeling. I remembered how I wanted to feel when I was done. I remember what sparked the poems in the first place. So it was difficult in some ways, you know, but I learned a lot about. Because usually a book comes out and you read from that book until the next book comes out, and you kind of move the older books farther into your past. And going back into some of those books put me right back in the moment I was in when I was writing.

[B]

Can we hear some poetry?

[A]

Sure.

[B]

Maybe one of your earlier pieces, doing the Louvre, is that one you could do?

[A]

I could do that one.

[B]

Talk about what?

[A]

This is one of the first trips, one of the first trips to Europe, I took as A poet. When I was was to Paris. And I'm just a little girl from the west side of Chicago. I had never been, you know. So I'm there with a friend of mine. And we're running around and we're in the Louvre and we're pointing at things, you know. Because most American tourists like to pretend like they know everything already. Oh, that would be the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know. And we were just like. The joy of discovery. This is fantastic. So it's a poem that I wrote because I want people to remember. What was it like when you did that for the first time before you got jaded and numb to it?

[B]

So.

[A]

Ready?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. This is for my friend, Patricia Zamora. You're a junkie, just like I am. After we dump your husband in the Louvre's cafe to sip the steaming tea and chew on his poetry, we're off like schoolgirls screeching in duet, Dazzled by the bright eternal gasp of ancient things. We've got no business here, homegirl and compaera. We've got no business closing our mouths around this sharp, exquisite language. Or savoring the sweet tongue squeeze of pastries, shining cakes and shaved chocolates. We're of simpler stock, city and country dust, collard greens, moon pies, bullet holes and basement slow dances. We are shamelessly American rough street girls with rusty knees, the flip side of Parisian wisp. In slim cashmere coats the color of tobacco. Girlfriend, you and I are too much scream for this place. But you're a junkie just like I am Too long denied access to official beauty. We walk these streets with our mouths open and faces tilting up. Much too much scenery and sound for our thin American throats. We gawk at cathedrals with their gargoyles bleached to an eerie snarl by bright slashes of moon. Say goodbye when we mean yes. Good morning when we mean how much. Ask for bread when we need the toilet. We are amazed that no one is asking for all of this back. That we are allowed to bask in this city's light. I can still hear my mama as plain and practical as a cast iron skillet. Child, you need to stop all that foolishness over there in some France where you don't know nothing or nobody. Ain't no black folks over there, no way. But I know you, old friend, with your bright burnished tangle of hair and deep laugh. And right now these halls belong to us. There are bad girls loose in the Louvre, girls, softest gunshots, Girls nourished and fueled by silvers silks, and the stone gaze of Napoleon. We laugh at the smashed noses of Egyptian rulers, stare at the tiny mummified feet of a young girl, mistake Goya for Gauguin, and rub what surfaces we can when we say things like, hey, I think I saw this on a postcard once. Or, do you know how old this thing is? How can the world help but love us? We would give Venus our arms. After seven hours clicking our hungry heels and snapping illicit flash photos in dark halls brimming with whispered music, we finally find the Mona Lisa alone, caged in antiseptic behind that glass every woman wears. And we wonder how best to free her, knowing she's a junkie just like we are. She longs for our wild voices, our naive accidental beauty. She's aching to ditch that frame and skip these hallowed halls with the home girls, mistake the obscene for the exquisite, and gaze at unsolved mysteries that just for once are not her own.

[B]

Doing the Louvre. Doing the Louvre from 1991.

[A]

That's a long time ago.

[B]

You could find that in the new collection, the Intentions of Thunder. Patricia Smith, poet, is with us today. New and selected poems collected in this running from the years 1991 all the way through 20. So quite an arc of time covered during this. It's really fun to hear one of these really early poems and what you're capturing there. And maybe you could talk about that one line. You come back to it, I think, three times during the piece.

[A]

Oh, you're a junkie, just like I am.

[B]

You're a junkie, just like I am. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. So I am from Chicago. I am a product of the Chicago public schools, and everybody from Chicago knows what that means. And so I did a lot of. And I'm an only child, so I did a lot of gathering of fish that I thought were worldly pictures, things that I cut out of magazines. This is what I'm striving for. I want to see this in a person one day. Never really thinking it was going to happen. But I was a collector of places I wanted to be and things I wanted to see. And so when I say, you're a junkie, just like I am, she was the same way. We got there and we started.

[B]

Your friend was the same way.

[A]

Patricia Zamora was the same way. Well, she was Puerto Rican, so we were like, ah. And all of a sudden, there we are, a lover.

[B]

A junkie, like a lover of things.

[A]

Right? And we are seeing. Yeah, a lover of things. A collector, you know, I want all of it. And I want it right now. That kind of thing.

[B]

Music, experiences.

[A]

And I'm still that way as a poet. I'm always looking to collaborate with musicians, filmmakers, dancer. I think when we put the arts, the arts are always speaking to each other, you know, and we put them together. So I'm in a perfect place right now. I work in an art center. I get to do poetry everywhere that I go. I get to teach it. I do workshops, I do readings. I'm surrounded by what I'm most impassioned about, and that's how I want to live my life.

[B]

You dedicate this new collection, the Intentions of Thunder, to all of your teachers. There's a list right at the very beginning. And you are a teacher, a professor yourself. What is. You know, can you talk about the value of teachers in our lives?

[A]

The value of teachers. Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time searching for her fifth grade teacher, I went to a school where we were expected to fail. Everyone was expected to fail. And for the first time, I had a teacher look at me and look at something that I had written and tell me, you were meant to do this. You know, whatever we need to do, you need to keep writing. And then I had some of those other teachers after that. But I always, always remembered that. And I remember the day that I grad. Well, you kind of graduate from fifth grade because you go on to middle school. I walked across the stage at that graduation, and my fifth grade teacher was on her knees with her arms open to greet me. And I call upon that feeling a lot because if it had not happened, it would be so easy to talk me into, okay, your life is preordained. You know, you grew up in this place. You grew up around these people. You grew up in this, you know, so just face it, you're not going.

[B]

To make it when I teach. I mean, you're talking about it now. Yeah, but when a teacher in fifth grade says something like that, what power does that have?

[A]

It was amazing. And my dad, I had told him early on that I wanted to write. And even in my own family, my mother said, oh, well, only white men do that. So anytime I found something that aligned with my burgeoning dream, I kind of clung to it and said, okay, even if nobody ever reads it, I know I'm gonna write. I loved the idea that the canvas is clear every day and you can just fill it with whatever story is pushing at you at the time, you know? And now I do it for a living.

[B]

Well, what would you say to someone who Someone listening maybe right now who is an aspiring poet but perhaps doesn't feel confident yet in their writing. What message would you have?

[A]

Well, it's the same thing as if I were to go into a school and have a child tell me I can't write poetry because I'm a bad speller or, you know, and poetry is something that belongs explicitly to you. No one has to see it. It could make you move from one place in your head to a safer place to a stronger place. And. And my thing is something that I didn't have much when I started, but you can now go online and hear everybody from Robert Frost to Gwendolyn Brooks to hear them read their own poetry. And I think the first thing I would do is say, don't think of yourself as a poet, think of yourself as a storyteller. And you're choosing poetry more often to tell those stories because we are all storytellers. And the idea that our stories are worth it, that'd be the first thing that I would get across, that no matter where that story begins, where it plays out, it's always worth it.

[B]

We listened to you read a poem from the very beginning of this book, an early one. Can we hear a more recent poem I was thinking about? One that comes very near the end of the book. It's called what Daughters Come Down To. This comes from the section of the book collecting works from 2010 through 2024. Is that one that you could do today?

[A]

Surely I could do that. And there is something I want to tell you about this one.

[B]

Yes, tell us.

[A]

I'll wait till I'm finished.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

What Daughters Come Down To. For what I'm sure is the fifth time my mother plugs in a flat mournful hum where the words I love you too should be. Then she hangs up without saying goodbye. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to imagine 82 autumns in the bones in her rasping joints, in the cool jaded thump of what is still a migrant's ever arriving heart. However, I believe she is required to love me. I wonder what God was teaching her all those years, those day after days coaxing raucous hips into deadening girdles and gray a lines so she could lose her mind to Oregon. Was it all theater, a screeching of north when south was what itched her? All of it mock belly, the nails splinter, spewing cross, some sly spirit habitually overloading her spine, making her dance thirsty and unfolded. How could all those wry hymns and hot sauced hallelujahs Lead to this humor clipped k' neck and hush. I am hundreds of miles away, but I can see where she is sitting, hands still on the phone. Every surface in her tiny apartment is scoured and bleached, draped in a disinfectant meld of rain, shower and blades. The kitchen glints. Jesus's searing blue eyes look down on everything. Her rugs are faultless. The purpled tulips I have sent for her birthday are insistent, feral beauty, a blood in the room like her daughter, they have bloomed in the clutches of vapor. I love you too, she thinks out loud, but can't.

[B]

What did you want to share about that poem?

[A]

One of the things. When you asked me how my poetry had changed throughout the years, I think that some of the things that I attempted to address, family things, loss, heartbreak, all those things, when I tried to address them earlier, I didn't have the tools or the courage to do so. I think the longer I wrote, the more I realized that I was telling my own life story and that there are a lot of things in that story that other people go through. And we tend to clutch our secrets. And the minute you bring something out into the air as like, oh, I didn't have a great relationship with my mom, other people come up to you and say, oh my God, me too. And so that idea of growing the community of witnesses and having people say, oh, I can write about that. I can meet other people who have gone through that. So it's been. It's a really big responsibility in poetry now that a lot of people who don't write poetry or even really listen to it that much are hungry now. They're coming into these audiences and they're looking for someone who lives a parallel life. They're looking for guide. Truth is in such short supply lately that people are now turning to the poets and saying, oh, what's going on over here? What are they saying? You know, and when we're writing about serious things, we owe it to those people to give them a lifeline, something they can reach for.

[B]

It's a powerful juxtaposition in this piece, between the lines, you know, someone whose rugs are faultless but who can't bring themselves to say, I love you too.

[A]

Cleanest woman in the history of the world. Yeah, just very. My mother was always very businesslike and such a. Such a contrast with my dad, who was, you know, funny and told stories and sang badly and did all that stuff, you know, So I think the poet in me, there's something that I got from my mom. But if you look at me now, I'm all, my father. I'm all. I'm just. I can't sing either.

[B]

There's a lot of great work in this book about music and history. Your mother, your father, son. It's an incredible collection. Again, it spans the years 1991 through 2024.

[A]

You're just gonna keep saying that. 1991.

[B]

It's amazing to me. Patricia Smith, thank you so much for joining us today.

[A]

Thank you for. It was a pleasure.

[B]

I really appreciate it and for sharing your poetry with us. You were a professor at Princeton, four time champion of the National Poetry Slam. The most recent book is the Intentions of New and Selected Poems. Again, thanks for joining us.

[A]

You're welcome.

[B]

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[C]

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